


Gone

by applepail



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Hell, Reapers, The Cage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-19
Updated: 2013-02-19
Packaged: 2017-11-29 19:55:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/690831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/applepail/pseuds/applepail
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Death offers the youngest Winchester a chance to escape Hell, and although Adam is excited to leave eternal damnation, he can't say he's too excited about the consequences of deals with Death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gone

**Author's Note:**

> A scribble I wrote while listening to Gone by Ian Axel (It's practically Adam's theme song) that I ended up liking. I may write more about this if people actually end up caring about it.

Contrary to popular belief, Death could feel. He just never put any effort into it. The consequences, however, were that he was unused to many emotions. After all, he had only experienced twenty eight feelings throughout eternity. And very basic ones at that. Happiness, content, boredom, the like. They were interesting enough, but he never really understood why humans, angels, demons and even God himself, put so much time into them. So much faith into the soul's vibrations humans rationalized as chemical reactions.

But after seeing Dean Winchester, the angry, drunken human, fight so hard for brothers who did not belong in the afterlife, Death felt something new. It was strange. He tried to guess what the humans called it.

Sympathy? No, that was different. Much different. He was not empathetic. His black heart did not go out to the boy who fought a dying world. Of course, this also ruled out compassion as a possible emotion. He was very sure he would never feel such a thing. A number of other words crossed his furrowed brow. 

No, he knew what it was.

Pity. A sort of forbearance. It was unlikely, but true. He saw the eldest Winchester as no more than a small creature, not unlike a bug, who was gravely injured but still clung to painful breaths, as if it had something to fight for. He watched the man writhe in agony as he had seen many others as they drew near his leathery wings of pleasure. Dean Winchester was only human, but Dean Winchester was a survivor. 

He could claim a heart of stone and alcohol, but how many others would take on the end of an era? Who else would stand in his place and plummet head-first into the perils he saw? Who else would deny happiness in favor of constant travel and pain, only to aid complete strangers who's safety was never guaranteed?

Death turned away from the man who lived to please. Dean would not live forever, and all in all, his existence, like the billions before him, meant very little in the eyes of he who has seen everything, but just this once, Death wanted to thank the wayward soul for his duty to the ignorant race.

He turned his eyes hellward. Castiel ripping yet another soul from perdition. Or at least, the body. He watched the angel fend off his brothers and tear Sam away from the chains and flames. He watched yet another martyr cry out, begging for help and pleading to be dragged into the dim light as well, but no such rescue came on him. Adam Milligan screamed through the smoke that tore at his eyes and lungs for his brother to come back and to please, please not leave him alone here. He did not want to be alone.

Adam was only human. Adam was not a survivor. He was a slave to a fight that was not even his own. He had let himself be dragged into damnation, all for the sake of a cause he did not understand. He body was twisted, crushed, burned and cut over and over and over. Death watched the fate of the child through wise eyes, for Adam Milligan was not the first soul to see such horrors.

Death heard the cries for forgiveness that came from the boy's mouth. Only a boy, even by human standards. Adam apologized over and over for whatever sins he had committed and for doubting his knowledgable brothers. For a hundred years he begged for his brother's return to his side, so even if he was in agony, he knew he was not, in fact, completely alone in a deep, dark, inescapable pit at the bottom of eternity.

Death's hands alone could truthfully pull from the pit. Not only pull, but mend and heal the wounds from the flames, even if it left a few scars. He might as well use this power.

His whistled the archangels off like trained dogs, for no one disobeyed Death when it called, and stared down at the bloody pulp someone once called Adam. It drew short, shallow breaths as it looked up at Death with large, pleading eyes. Nothing Death had not seen before. The eyes of someone who would accept death over pain were not a rare sight.

"Up," Death ordered, as the mangled corpse attempted to put itself back together. It was gruesome. "Oh, quit being dramatic, Milligan."

"Fuck off..." The boy muttered, shakily getting to his feet.

"I'd watch your tongue if I was you."

"Why?" Adam countered, wincing in pain. They had certainly done a number on him. "Gonna light me on fire? Hang me on a chain? Pull my arms off? Feed me my own stomach?"

"I came to make you an offer."

"That's nice, but my dealing days are over," Adam spat. "I don't take orders from feathery assholes anymore."

"I said," Death growled, plucking Adam up by the back of his shirt. Death had felt this emotion before. Annoyance. "Watch your tongue. I am no angel."

"What are you then?" Adam asked. "A new demon?"

"One of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, you dense child," Death said. "Death, in the flesh."

"Well, you're a little late," Adam said, not even a hint of fear in his voice. Maybe Adam was like his brother. "I'm already dead."

Death would have been surprised at the boy's flat-out acceptance of his title if he hadn't known that Adam had already seen and experienced many things. Death came as no shock.

"You're not dead," Death said patiently. "You're merely trapped in this cage."

Adam remained silent, looking Death over from head to toe.

"I find it very interesting, Adam Milligan," Death sighed. "That you've been tortured down here for decades, all alone and screaming, and you still think you have say."

"If you're making a deal with me I better damn well have say."

"You don't even know what the offer is, Milligan."

Adam paused again. "...What is it?"

"Adam, I'm here to offer you a placement in my..." Death paused. "Well, let's just call it my ranks."

"...You're offering me a... job?"

"You will not be paid, obviously," Death explained. "But it will get you out of here. Unless, of course, you want to stay."

"N-no, sir..."

"That's a good boy," Death said, enjoying Adam's newfound respect for authority. "Now, Adam, how would you feel about being a reaper?"

"A reaper?" Adam asked. "Like--"

"Whatever you are about to say, I'm going to say not likely."

"...Than what?"

"You could spend eternity here waiting for your incompetent brothers to help you," Death said rationally. "Or you can spend forever collecting souls for me."

Adam crossed his arms over his chest. Not only was his strength returning, but so was his classic Winchester spunk.

"What's the catch?"

"The 'catch' as you call it," Death said. "Does not exist."

"Nothing? I get a free ticket out?"

"Being a reaper isn't easy, Adam. If you can't do the job, I'll just have to send you back here."

"What do you mean 'isn't easy?'"

"You were going to college to study medicine, correct?" Death knew the answer. "You wanted to help people and follow in your mother's footsteps. You wanted to make her proud. Of course. You loved her, and she had worked so hard to raise you, why shouldn't she be happy with the outcome? But you knew what that meant, yes? You would've had to watch innocents die in your care, Milligan. Constantly. It weighs heavy on a soul to know there was nothing else you could do. Now imagine, you'd be the one to rip the soul from the body. You'd have to lead them away and explain to them what's happening and why for the rest of your life. You'll break up families, take children from their homes and reap good, honest people as well as cruel ones. Adam Milligan, being a reaper is no game."

Adam stared at his feet, head spinning a bit. Somehow, Death took his life-long goal and turned it against him. Somehow, Death made him believe Hell was the lesser of two nightmares.

"Is that it...?"

"If you accept this offer, Adam Milligan will be erased from every timeline in existence. No one will remember you because you were never born. John Winchester and Kate Milligan will meet in passing, but she will never bear his child."

"Sam and Dean too?" Adam asked. "I mean, they have all that spell crap and the angels--"

"Adam Milligan never was and never will be."

He was dead, why did that sting do badly? Was it because life was dangled to tantilizingly in front of him? Death himself had sid Adam was not dead. Just trapped in an inescapable pit. Why would it matter? He was dead to Earth, at least. Every file with his name on it had been marked deceased. His only family was dead. He had friends when he was on Earth, and surely they mourned him, but did it really matter if he had never existed?

Adam scanned his memory. He had never saved any lives or changed anyone's world too drastically. In fact, he was sure his mother would thrive without him in her life. She wouldn't have to pay to feed him or spend her previous time helping him with every little thing.

The burdens he put on his mother had always bothered him. He always did his best to be independant.

"I'll never be born..." Adam muttered to himself.

"Do we have an answer?" Death asked impatiently. "I doubt the archangels will stay at bay forever."

It would help his mother.

"I'll do it."

"Your brothers can save you. It's not impossible. Only a matter of how and when."

"I said I'd do it."

"Of course," Death said with a grim nod. "Right this way then, Adam."

Adam was frozen in place. Leaving his own existence behind was scarier than he expected. He remembered all the times a friend had cried on his shoulder, or his mother had called him the light of her life and how much she loved him.

"Being forgotten is a natural human fear, Adam."

“I’m not afraid,” Adam said. “Just... thinking.”

“Then wrap it up.”

"They won't even know I'm gone..." Adam muttered, wiping a rogue tear on his sleeve. He did not want to be in Hell. Being a reaper was better than torture, even if no one even remembered the sacrifices he made.

You should know, Death could not rewrite time as he had implied, but he knew Adam would never agree if he knew the truth.

No, they would not remember him, but that doesn't mean he never existed. Adam's conquests and failures will have impacted the world the exact same way they had before he agreed to join the ranks of death, but no one will know his name. He will be wiped from everyone's memory. They will only know emptiness where the name Adam Milligan once was. A blank longing with no possible fit.

Death changed his mind.

Adam Milligan was just like his brother.

A pitiful survivor.


End file.
